SERMONS.

SERMON I.

SOWING AND REAPING.

HOSEA X. 12.

Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy.

We

WE profess and call ourselves Christians. acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. We believe that from Him, by Whose name we are called, emanates every thing which can give us hope while we live, and which can save us from despair when we come to die. In Him, so long as we continue in Him, we are safe; apart from Him, our ruin is irrecoverable, irremediable. Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. His life is our example; His death our atonement; His resurrection is our justification, and

the seal of our acceptance; His ascension is our assurance that we have an advocate with the Father; His promised return is our most awful warning and highest encouragement. In Jesus, the Son of Mary, we see One made like unto ourselves in all things, sin alone excepted, the partaker of our infirmities, the sharer in our temptations, and sufferings, and sorrows: One Who can sympathise with us, and feel for us; Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, as having Himself experienced the full weight and bitterness of every trial to which humanity can be exposed. In Christ the Son of God, we see One, Who being the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, is as able as He is willing to save us all. He is our hope and our fortress, our castle, and deliverer, our defender in Whom we trust; in Him, and Him alone that trust is fixed; and the grounds of that trust are His Incarnation and sinless life; His agony and bloody sweat; His cross and passion; His precious death and glorious resurrection; His shedding abroad the gift of His Spirit, and His constant intercession in our behalf. To us most

miserable sinners, Christ is all in all, and the atoning sacrifice of the cross the one plea we can offer for final acceptance with God.

If then, we speak of the necessity there is that Christians should lead holy lives, or of the possibility of our performing true and laudable, service, we never speak as implying the notion that any service of our's can be meritorious, or that any amount of personal holiness could entitle us to claim a place in heaven. It cost more to redeem our souls, so that we must leave that thought alone for ever. Rather must we bow our heads to the dust continually, under the reflection that so guilty were we, that nothing but the blood-shedding of our God could save us, rather, as we lift up our eyes to that hill of Calvary from whence cometh our help, must our one thought be that of the immeasurable mercy of Him who took pity on us children of perdition, who could do nothing for ourselves, but increase the burden of our guilt and rebellion.

Such, I say, is our condition. In ourselves we can do nothing. To no works of our own can we trust for salvation. And yet the Bible, from one end to the other, the New Testament as well as the Old,

-is continually addressing us in language similar to that of the Prophet in the text, "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy." We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come, and admit that it will be through Christ's merits alone, if in that world to come, our lot is fixed in

heaven, not in hell: and yet we profess our belief that at the last day we shall be severally judged for our actions, and our eternal destiny decided according as they have been good or evil.

Now, as it must needs be of great importance that we should have clear and right views upon such a momentous subject as this, let us see what the Word of God, as expounded and witnessed to by the Church, teaches with reference to the necessity of a life of righteousness on our part, and as to the grounds on which a reward will be given to the righteous hereafter.

The passage from which my text is taken, is a part of the writings of Hosea, whose denunciations against the transgressions of the chosen race are among the most severe which are to be found in the writings of the prophets, and therefore are peculiarly well adapted for the meditation of us Christians among the Gentiles, who have been admitted into Christ's Holy Catholic Church, and who, on that ground, are a "chosen generation;" but who, like Israel of old, have but too abundant reason to expect the outpourings of God's wrath on our wickedness and spiritual idolatry.

Among these predictions, however, of coming vengeance, will be found many invitations to repentance, and many promises of mercy, such as the Good Spirit of God hath ever blended with His most awful

threatenings. And such is the passage under consideration. Even while the Almighty declares that it is in His desire to punish them, He reminds them of the gentleness He had heretofore shown them; how, like a husbandman with untried heifers, who encourages them, and gradually accustoms them to the yoke, He had endeavoured to win them to obedience. And then he exhorts them to be no longer restive and refractory, but obedient and docile. "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy: break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you."

The illustration here chosen from the works of nature, as they are usually called, is common to many other parts of Scripture; and the resemblance is so obvious between the progress of a seed from its first being committed to the soil, till the final harvest, with that of the gradual development of the principle of good in the soul of man, that I need not now stop to dwell upon it particularly. Suffice it to say, that in the passage before us the exhortation to repentance and a holy life is expressed under the metaphor of ploughing and sowing, and the promise of mercy is conveyed under a similar metaphor of rain upon the seed sown, and of reaping a joyful harvest.

We are told, then, in the first instance to "sow in righteousness:" and what this injunction involves we